While President Joe Biden has made several moves to prevent domestic oil production in the United States, his administration has just announced that it would allow Chevron to resume pumping oil in socialist Venezuela — a move that has drawn sharp criticism.
What a rude slap in the face to Americans! How does pumping oil in Venezuela, dirty crude oil at that, protect Joe's climate?
Does he think he's kicking sand in the Saudi's faces? 🧐
Biden Admin Authorizes Chevron to Resume Oil Pumping in Venezuela https://t.co/jiqWDkXpWT
— Daniel F. Baranowski (@DFBHarvard) November 27, 2022
The Biden administration’s move is a reversal of restrictions from the Trump administration which were put on companies in an effort to oust Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
The Treasury Department released a statement about the decision.
“On November 26th, the Unitary Platform and the Maduro regime announced the resumption of talks in Mexico City; a humanitarian agreement focused on education, health, food security, flood response, and electricity programs that will benefit the Venezuelan people; and agreement on the continuation of talks focused on the 2024 elections,” the statement read. “Following this announcement and consistent with U.S. government policy, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Venezuela General License (GL) 41, authorizing Chevron Corporation to resume limited natural resource extraction operations in Venezuela.”
The statement went on to claim that the Biden administration’s move to “provide targeted sanctions relief” was based on the Venezuelan government’s recent actions to help its citizens and “support the restoration of democracy.”
The sanctions relief will last for six months, at which point a decision will be made as to whether it will be revoked or amended.
According to a 2019 report from CNBC, Venezuela’s economy was destroyed by its “state-run economic model” which “wasted the world’s largest oil reserves.” The outlet also noted that inflation in Venezuela in 2019 had reached a peak of nearly 10 million percent since 2018, and had left many Venezuelan citizens unable to feed themselves.
The Biden administration’s decision to provide sanctions relief to the socialist nation comes as the administration has been facing sharp criticism for its hostility toward the energy sector in the U.S. — especially toward issuing new drilling permits.
Speaking with Fox News on Sunday, former White House Economic Adviser Stephen Moore criticized the Biden administration’s decision — arguing that the move makes no sense and puts America last.
“I literally almost fell out of my chair reading this headline that says we’re going to allow, you know, Chevron to do drilling in Venezuela,” he said. “This is the same administration that won’t allow us to do drilling here in the United States, not in Texas, not in Oklahoma, not in Alaska, not in West Virginia. But we can pump oil from Venezuela. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s put America last energy policy.”
“And by the way, when Trump left office and I helped Trump on energy policy, our whole policy was to make America totally energy independent so we wouldn’t have to rely on countries like Venezuela and Iran and Russia,” Moore added. “And so somebody explain this one to me because it makes no sense.”
